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Publius: The Journal of Federalism Advance Access originally published online on November 6, 2008
Publius: The Journal of Federalism 2009 39(2):341-365; doi:10.1093/publius/pjn035
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

This article appears in the following Publius: The Journal of Federalism issue: Federalism and Constitutional Change [View the issue table of contents]

Reforming Federalism in Germany: Incremental Changes instead of the Big Deal

Simone Burkhart*
*Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies; burkhart{at}mpifg.de

The unique characteristics of Germany's federalism have been long identified as one of the main obstacles to legitimate and efficient governance. In 2006, the grand coalition adopted a federal reform which aims to disentangle the intertwined levels of government by reducing the influence of the Länder governments in federal policy-making and strengthening the Länder by granting more legislative competences to the federal states. In this article, I summarize the reasons for the constitutional change, provide a short overview of the reform process, and evaluate its results. I argue that the achieved compromise will only lead to incremental changes in Germany's federalism and will not be sufficient to solve the perceived problems of Germany's federal structure.


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